Rachel Barkow

Who is Rachel Barkow?

Rachel Elise Barkow is a professor of law at the New York University School of Law. She is also faculty director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law. Her scholarship focuses on administrative and criminal law, and she is especially interested in applying the lessons and theory of administrative law to the administration of criminal justice. In 2007, Barkow won the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award at NYU. In the fall of 2008, she served as the Beneficial Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Barkow graduated from Northwestern University in 1993, and from Harvard Law School in 1996. At Harvard, Barkow won the Sears Prize and served on the Law Review. She clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and for Justice Antonin Scalia at the United States Supreme Court, according to one report serving as the "counter-clerk"—the nickname given to the Democrat he hires to sniff out political biases in his arguments. Barkow was an associate at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans in Washington, D.C., from 1998–2002, where she focused on telecommunications and administrative law issues in proceedings before the FCC, state regulatory agencies, and federal and state courts. She took a leave from the firm in 2001 to serve as the John M. Olin Fellow in Law at Georgetown University Law Center.